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Comment by jonas21 | Hacker News Reader

It's a revenue share deal where Google pays Apple 36% of the search revenue they get from Safari users [1].

In other words, Google pays Apple ~$20B per year to be default search engine because they make ~$53B in revenue from those searches. This is profitable for both Apple and Google -- no "wildly illegal under-the-table measures" required.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/14/apple-gets-36percent-of-goog...

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How much would Google even lose if Apple didn't make Google the default search engine? People would almost certainly just use Google anyway. If Apple switched to Bing most people would use it once, get pissed off, and then switch it back to Google.

It's not that weird that people are a bit suspicious that it's really worth Google $20B/year.

I couldn’t possibly disagree more. I’ve always worked with end users and I can say with confidence that the majority of people wouldn’t change it or more accurately wouldn’t feel like putting in the effort/dealing with the hassle of changing it, minor as it may be. Also a non-trivial segment of the population most likely wouldn’t be aware of that it is even an option.

The power of the default is just that, they it is the default.

Also Apple themself has only one incentive which is to get the best deal for themselves. Is Microsoft willing to offer more money than Google? The evidence points to no.

I use ddg, have basically since it was released, what's wrong with bing?

Back when I tried both more extensively a few years ago, Google was a lot better giving me results relevant in Europe and Asia. Bing and duck duck go used to be very US only focused. Which made me go back to Google.

I don't know if or how much that's changed.

that's unfortunate, really. Is there no other options for those regions? I'm not suggesting yandex, but others exist, right?

This was all about ten years or so ago.

I just gave Bing a quick try, and it seems to be a bit more useful (for Singapore) now than it used to be. I haven't tried all the other alternatives.

the fuzziness is too high (forget searching for specific error messages, prepend !g for that) and it doesn't have a 'verbatim' mode (on google search: tools -> verbatim) ..

That's a fair question, but even if Google makes an extra $21B/year because of that default setting it's still a good deal for Google.

ah the advertising ecosystem.

even when an outsider tries to think of the nastiest scam, an insider shows up to explain the boring day to day is already worse.

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